wake up babe, new reason to ditch FANDOM/Wikia just dropped
Previosuly
corporate monster infested with ads which devoured Gamepedia and other companies (feat me on their shit policies, SEO and migration process)
turning entire articles into ads if paid enough
limited functionality preventing admins to even fight vandalism
merging and removing of LGBT+ wikis (and forced domain change for educational [think serious] wikis to "fandom")
official wiki status has no meaning in controlling shit
very much censorship (same good ol' allergy to adult stuff)
gets paid by US Navy to advertise their events (one, two)
Alternative free wiki hostings (aka wiki farms)
Miraheze - started in 2015, non-commercial - no ads and runs on donations, wide array of MediaWiki features, wide array of allowed types of wikis and content, much autonomy for projects, custom domain and private wiki options
wiki.gg - started in 2022 by former Gamepedia staff, limited to video games, accent on involvement of game devs and thus hosting official wikis, has ads for anons (but only of games having wikis here)
Telepedia - started in 2022, limited to entertainment (although might allow other themes upon review), has ads for anons, replicates Miraheze structure
WikiTide - started in 2023, no ads and runs on donations (but also tied w/ premium version called WikiForge), largely replicates Miraheze but has stricter content policies, custom domain option
Other free options I'm aware of are either too limited in allowed content or are very outdated/unstable in technical department to recommend here (or in case of Neoseeker - I'm completely unfamiliar with it, and can't say anything about it), but you still can check them out, alongside paid hostings, on this MediaWiki page.
If you (or your community) are brave and dedicated enough you can go with self-hosted MediaWiki instance (aka independent hosting), like JoJo Wiki (who started on Wikia and succeed at overtaking the SEO) or NIWA wikis. This option, of course, requires funding and technical knowledge, but it's still very much possible.
How to find existing alternative/independent wikis
try to use "-fandom" filter for search query in Google, or use other search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGo
Indie Wiki Buddy browser extension - it modifies search engine results and performs redirects based on its centralized list of independent wikis; a new indie wiki has to be requested/submitted to get added [ Firefox / Chrome ]
Redirect to wiki.gg browser extension - same as IWB but for wikis moved to wiki.gg (as I understand, works automatically without dedicated listing) [ Firefox / Chrome ]
(simple) Redirector browser extension - in case the wiki is neither on IWB or wiki.gg, and it doesn't filter out search results - only performs redirect on whatever you get; a redirect has to be set manually - see this tutorial [ Firefox / Chrome ]
Fuck FANDOM, support real people, support indie wikis
